Egyptologist Véronique Verneuil recounts her adventure in the footsteps of Pharaoh Cheops

Véronique Verneuil is an Egyptologist and author. She is also the former wife of the famous director Henri Verneuil, who died more than 20 years ago, author of numerous films that have left their mark on cinema such as The Cow and The Prisoner (1959), President (1961) or even A monkey in winter (1962). She first started as a journalist after studying classics, then she turned to Egyptology at the University of Geneva and then at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, before leaving for Cairo. and in Damascus. In April 2023, she published the book Cheops – I am eternity at Orient Editions. A work written with four hands with his friend, the archaeologist Zahi Hawass.

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franceinfo: It’s a book that tells the story of the deity, the pharaoh, but also and first of all the child, the teenager and the man. A part that we don’t know that much, after all.

Veronique Verneuil: Yes, we wanted to make an apprenticeship novel since we know nothing of the Pharaoh Cheops, practically nothing. We have a small statuette of him, we have his large funerary boat, of course his pyramid, but we have no real document from the reign. You had to be both an archaeologist and an Egyptologist to be able to retransmit the spirit of an era and at the same time be a novelist to get into the head of a guy no one knows anything about.

The book begins with the chaotic birth of Cheops, almost miraculous as told by his mother. Was it the starting point to tell a little about this unusual character with a somewhat unusual entry into life too?

We wanted to give back the place to women. We wanted to make the women of the time speak, so we started with her mother. We wanted to reframe the slightly feminist fashion that there is today, you know, where all the women of Egypt were supposedly free, queens, etc. In fact, it was a bit like today, it hasn’t progressed that much in 4,600 years. A little, a little, but precisely, we wanted to insist on the fact that the queens, the princesses were first of all wombs to provide children for the dynasty. We wanted to have her mother tell it, who is an emblematic person in the book, who is a backward-looking, traditional woman, etc., who is tough, but who is also a woman first and foremost.

Even today, the pyramid of Cheops remains mysterious. We haven’t discovered everything yet. Isn’t that what feeds this desire to know a little more? It’s all fascinating.

When you see the treasure of a little Tutankhamun who was nothing at all and most of whose treasure was not even made for him, you can imagine what the treasure of a Cheops could be!

Veronique Verneuil

at franceinfo

It’s fascinating because we still have Ali Baba’s cave spirit within us. When we think of Egypt, we think of its treasures, we think of its gold. Today, scientists tell you:No, but today, you know, in archaeology, what we like is translating texts, deepening history“. But wait, the substantive marrow isn’t about finding treasure?

It was important for you to talk about the place of women within this book. Your ex-husband, Henri Verneuil, didn’t necessarily want you to work. I have the impression that there is a little wink!

Obviously. He would have been 103 years old, it was not my generation at all. He was from a generation where when you had a woman in your life, you spoiled her, you cared for her, the word is ugly, but in the end, you spoiled her. And this woman was not supposed to work. She was to be a kind of muse present at home. Above all, she should not come into contact with the world of work which is a difficult world, which is a world where, perhaps, we get dirty and it is a world where I could also perhaps meet other men. . We never know ! And so he would prefer me to stay home.

And at the same time, you managed to accomplish yourself very quickly. In the end, you never gave up.

I never gave up on anything because in fact, we had made a deal. Me, I was working. He told me : “No, you don’t work anymore because I don’t want you to go see people I wouldn’t receive at my table“. So, I took advantage of it, I said: ok, I don’t work, but I study, because I always needed to have an intellectual curiosity to satisfy. So I studied during our 17 years of marriage. I had a sponsor who paid for my studies and so it was still a personal enrichment for me and afterwards, it became a passion. For him, it was an exoticism. His woman loved Egypt, she read the hieroglyphs, it was funny and it became such a passion that I divorced Henri Verneuil, this giant of cinema, this extraordinary guy to go and establish myself in Cairo. Because I believe that I have a daredevil, adventurous side, and that when you love a man at 25, at 40, you love him, but not in the same way. And then, you love yourself too. I loved myself and I wanted to fulfill myself a little, so I left.

What does the book represent Cheops – I am eternity for you ?

In ‘Cheops – I am eternity’, the important thing was to get everyone to talk and to show that there was an unbroken human chain that made it possible for 30 years to build this pyramid of Cheops.

Veronique Verneuil

at franceinfo

I think it’s not just another historical novel. We don’t really like the historical novel category, it seems that it’s outdated, but it’s still a historical novel. We wanted it to be a book, a peplum, that is to say accessible to everyone, even those who don’t know Egyptology. Those who know, will see winks. Those who do not know will not see all the winks, but they will be able to appreciate. It is primarily a humanist book, a book about men and women, how they live together. It is a social book, namely that we described the society of the Fourth Dynasty from the peasant, the artisan, from the bottom of the range to the top. It was also important for us to give a voice to little people that we don’t often hear in historical novels and also to give a voice to women who are sometimes considered as livestock.